RAM vs Loading Times

[cromabianca 158]

Hi guys!

 

So, I just discovered something amazing! I run the game on a Laptop (it's an Asus i7 6700HQ@2.60GHz, GTX950M with 4GB dedicated RAM) and since now I haven't had any particular problems. The game runs smooth enough, but loading times... man! Were they a pain!! So I did something very simple, actually: I upgraded my 8GB of RAM into 16GB (this is the max this laptop would accept anyway) and: WOW!!

 

I used to load the game (with approx. 1.2K assets and 60 mods) in 15 to 30 minutes (yeah, you read right!), now the same setup loads in less than 2 minutes! I could not believe that RAM upgrade would do so good form me! I assumed that loading times wouldn't improve much, because (this at least was my reasoning) the HD would still be the same, so reading speed would be the same, right? Boy, was I wrong!

 

Upgrading RAM really REALLY improves your loading times! Those of you who haven't tried yet, should!

[Irkie500 0]

My city peaked my RAM usage at 22gb, needed to upgrade to windows 10 pro since the other version only supports 16gb max. Another thing you can do is eliminate some assets, i can almost guarantee that you dont even use a quarter of what your subbed to.

[Rotype 121]

All the assets are loaded into VRAM until VRAM is full, then RAM.  With that many assets you've exceeded both VRAM and RAM and your computer is loading the assets into the pagefile on your HDD or SSD.  VRAM is much faster than RAM for this use, and RAM is MUCH MUCH faster than HDD/SSD for this use.

I saturate my 8GB VRAM then use about 10GB out of my 32GB RAM w/2k assets.  In a dream world I'd have 32 GB of VRAM and solve all my framerate problems.

[cmdp123789 710]

How do I know how much VRAM I have? also, Im guessing that after the loading using RAM, having a SSD would do the job so much faster than using a HDD, right?

[Irkie500 0]

10 minutes ago, Rotype said:

All the assets are loaded into VRAM until VRAM is full, then RAM.  With that many assets you've exceeded both VRAM and RAM and your computer is loading the assets into the pagefile on your HDD or SSD.  VRAM is much faster than RAM for this use, and RAM is MUCH MUCH faster than HDD/SSD for this use.

I saturate my 8GB VRAM then use about 10GB out of my 32GB RAM w/2k assets.  In a dream world I'd have 32 GB of VRAM and solve all my framerate problems.

Are you watching your VRAM usage as your loading? I have a monitor app up and the only thing that increases during loading is my actual RAM usage. The only thing I could see the game loading into VRAM ahead of time is some textures, then again with being on the loading screen the game isnt even calling those textures. Something seems off here..

[Irkie500 0]

7 minutes ago, cmdp123789 said:

How do I know how much VRAM I have? also, Im guessing that after the loading using RAM, having a SSD would do the job so much faster than using a HDD, right?

Use cortana(or Start/Run) and type dxdiag, that will give you a report of your hardware specs including VRAM. Yes a SSD is extremely fast compared to a HDD.

[Rotype 121]

I monitor my VRAM and RAM use, as well as all the other things via HWiNFO.  It's been a while since I actually looked while loading but I used to see the VRAM utilization increase to saturation, followed by RAM utilization. 

In addition I used to utilize much more RAM w/an older video card with much less VRAM.  I upgraded to one with more VRAM and didn't change anything else and saw a significant decrease in RAM utilization commensurate with the increase in available VRAM.

[Irkie500 0]

Just now, Rotype said:

I monitor my VRAM and RAM use, as well as all the other things via HWiNFO.  It's been a while since I actually looked while loading but I used to see the VRAM utilization increase to saturation, followed by RAM utilization. 

In addition I used to utilize much more RAM w/an older video card with much less VRAM.  I upgraded to one with more VRAM and didn't change anything else and saw a significant decrease in RAM utilization commensurate with the increase in available VRAM.

Curious indeed. I will take a look later today and see if my VRAM is used first before actual RAM. I don't think the game could actually store model data inside VRAM so its most likely just the textures and whatnot getting loaded in, and if your using a ton of assets I could see that being filled quickly.

[Rotype 121]

That is a good point, it could be just textures.  2k assets (many w/very large textures) could be what's using up my VRAM.  I'll investigate further after work.

[cmdp123789 710]

Yeah, but still, my question is.. if your ram runs out, would it load faster with a SSD? or the difference is minimal? Cause Im guessing that if the game loads on ram, and the ram runs out, the game will load it in the pagefile. Now, would that be faster on a SSD? That's my question really.. cause if the game loads it on the pagefile, and the "speed" is the same regardless, then having a 32gb ram would be the answer basically.

[rsc204 21,808]

5 hours ago, Irkie500 said:

Yes a SSD is extremely fast compared to a HDD

3 hours ago, cmdp123789 said:

Yeah, but still, my question is.. if your ram runs out, would it load faster with a SSD? or the difference is minimal?

Whilst SSDs are much faster than HDDs, it really depends on a number of factors. Used as a pagefile, the SSD is likely to see a modest increase in speed, but it's still so much slower than physical RAM, that this is a very undesirable solution.

Similarly, slow loading times will only be solved with more RAM if you are running out of RAM in the first place. It's not going to be the answer for everyone and can get a little expensive when you need more than 16GB in your system. It's easy to see how much RAM you are using, plenty of utilities exist to monitor it, you could just use Task Manager too.

I can't fathom why you'd populate the VRAM before RAM, honestly I'm inclined to say you are mistaken. Why? Well when playing, those assets you see must be in VRAM for a graphics card to render them at a speed that doesn't hugely degrade performance. The purpose of loading assets into RAM is to get them to the graphics card much faster than if they were waiting around on the HDD. But since you can't hold all your textures in VRAM (unless you've a stupid-expensive Graphics Board), if it did work this way, how would the GPU display those textures in RAM when it needed to, if it was already full? Shared-memory (SMA) systems do operate within the DirectX ecosystem and Windows, where the GPU will combine with RAM to make a larger pool of memory. But that would mean constant shuffling between RAM and VRAM or using (usually) much slower RAM to display assets, which would wipe out any performance benefits of filling the VRAM. In fact in areas where the texture in VRAM were not displayed, you'd be using the slower memory all the time or having to constantly move objects from RAM to VRAM (i.e. no benefits in real terms). In short, that would be a pointless way to optimise anything, since the system bus can grab data in RAM fast enough to get it into the VRAM only when it's needed, usually without a performance cost. This is how most games work.

Whilst this caching might improve in-game rendering somewhat, it's a total waste of resources and a poor solution really. It would be vastly more efficient to simply index these assets for swift retrieval, which would make the game load fast by default and reduce the hardware needs of the game. Honestly, it's bad coding, not that anyone will appreciate me pointing it out. The only time it wouldn't be is when it was literally necessary to cache the textures/models to provide acceptable in game performance. Considering this isn't a 60fps first person shooter, I'd be very sceptical of anyone using such an argument. Surely there is some optimisation in the engine so when zoomed out (when the most amount of objects are displayed at once), that the full resolution textures and geometry do not need to be loaded? That's before taking into account that every asset is loaded, even if half of them don't appear in your game. The upshot being, you have to spend money on hardware you wouldn't need if the code was a little more efficient.

[Trooth 22]

@rsc204 It is definitely bad coding.  I love the game but it is apparent that the core game was developed by a small team, that didn't anticipate us loading hundreds/thousands of assets.

[MisterBlueStar4 1,004]

16GB Ram, Raedeon 480 tx, 1.1K assets.What can possibly go wrong?

[Trooth 22]

I run decently at 16gb, core i5 2500k, and a GTX 1080.  I have about 1700 assets and 60 mods running.  I load up in less than 2 minutes, but I am mindful of the mods I run.  I don't run big memory hogs.  NEXT is an awesome mod, but I don't run it because of the load on my system.  I run at 4k with dynamic resolution set to 175% and I get 30ish FPS which is the lowest I will go.  For what the game is though, if they coded it better I should be at 60+ FPS.  But the game is superior overall, to all other city builders I have bought including SC4 in my opinion (going back to 1990 when I first bought SimCity).  

[cromabianca 158]

6 hours ago, Trooth said:

I run decently at 16gb, core i5 2500k, and a GTX 1080.  I have about 1700 assets and 60 mods running.  I load up in less than 2 minutes, but I am mindful of the mods I run.  I don't run big memory hogs.  NEXT is an awesome mod, but I don't run it because of the load on my system.  I run at 4k with dynamic resolution set to 175% and I get 30ish FPS which is the lowest I will go.  For what the game is though, if they coded it better I should be at 60+ FPS.  But the game is superior overall, to all other city builders I have bought including SC4 in my opinion (going back to 1990 when I first bought SimCity).  

What do you guys exactly mean when you say: "coding it better"? What exactly are this game's flaws code-wise?

[cmdp123789 710]

I have about 1.9 assets, and 102 mods I think. i7, gtx 965m and 16gb ram... mine takes about 6 minutes. How do you select what mods to have? I tried to get rid of some, and I did, yet I still have over 100!! 

[ghosty20 150]

On 02/06/2017 at 1:56 AM, Irkie500 said:

My city peaked my RAM usage at 22gb, needed to upgrade to windows 10 pro since the other version only supports 16gb max. Another thing you can do is eliminate some assets, i can almost guarantee that you dont even use a quarter of what your subbed to.

If you are meaning Win 10 Home the X64 version can use up to 128 gig of ram, same with the x64 of Win 8.. However the x64 version of Win 7 Home Premium could only use 16 gig you had to go to the pro version x64 of Win 7 for it to see past the 16 gig limit..

In other words Win 10 Home can access 128 gig..